Guild Wars 2

^very good post, totally worth reading.

Wahoo!!

Yea, Phase Retreat is awesome no question. It’s either a great survivablity weapon for WvW, PvP and solo PvE, or it’s the potential max dps weapon for raids. Still – it could make use of some buffs / QoL changes. Except for skill 2 and 3 (IF it doesn’t miss …) the other skills are pretty much garbage or underpowered.

Malice is 10% duration and bursting is 6% damage (stat). So yea, they’d stack with each other since it’s a different sigil.

Sabby definitly has lower armor than Gorsy :/ Or where did you get thsoe numbers from?

Heya,

I believed they have 2000, 2200 and 2600 armor since the dps difference for power professions agrees with this, and the common “light medium high” armor values made sense to me.

But the more I played and calculated with and for power professions, I started to notice that the armor might be higher, something like +400 for all of them.

Anyone noticed the same? Anyone doin’ some experiments on their actual armor values?

Greez!
- Xyonon

Wahoo!!

It’s the goal to get near 100%. This means is if you have around 95%+ duration, you’ll be just fine.

The tooltip can only display 0.25s but the truth is that the ingame damage will be precisely dealt. This means if you have 95% condi duration and a skill with 1s burn, it will burn for 1.95s even tough the tooltip says 2s.

Btw I’d change that food to the 18% pizza since 2% aren’t really worth 20 silver, unless you are filthy rich. What I do suggest you tough is to play raids and invest your first 600 tokens for a sabby viper back item.

You should also not just use … ugh … Metabattle >_> … blindly. Try to think for yourself and find a better and more efficient way to play. For example:

• Glass Cannon trait is garbage for condi. 5% damage affects only the power part, wich is 20% of your damage. This means this trait is in fact “1% more damage IF you have over 90% HP”.
• Use Grenadier instead, you’ll hit Vale Guardian and Gorseval much easier with those traits. Or moving targets in general. In other aspects of the game, you’ll simply hit more targets easier aswell. Superior trait here.
• Reactive Lenses CAN be swapped to Static Discharge if you know that there are no stuns ahead or you know you will be able to prevent them properly, like in raids.
• Kinetic Battery > Adrenal Implant. You’ll have enough dodges thx to Optimized Activation, so you don’t really need AI. Kinetic Battery on the other hand can greatly improve your survivablity or damage output if you learn to use it properly. It’s acutally the only reason to pick tools over scrapper for a condi engi (and the 15% cdr on toolbelt skills ofc).

Greez!
- Ziggy

Wahoo!

Yup, gonna agree with you on this one! I tought I’ve made these cals a long time ago but that’s probably it – it was a loooong time ago where I didn’t consider the power damage of the condi engi.

-> using this:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqancoClYh9ZB2aB0ehl0iCsEXxDg+4T+o/bDDgGA-TBiHQB0T9H9oEsWPAgyt/AAOBAEUZwuU6RO9AkCYRlVA-e

• full buffed condi engi has 2697 condi dmg / 2859 with bursting (+6%)
• 1s bleed deals 241 dmg / 254 with bursting (+5.4%)
• 1s burn deals 721 dmg / 754 with bursting (+4.5%)
• 1s poison deals 256 dmg / 269 with bursting (+5%)

• Superior Sigil of Geomancy deals 14474 dmg every ~9s, 1608 dps
• Superior Sigil of Earth deals 2412 dmg every ~3s, 804 dps

Now if bursting increases your outgoing condition damage by ø5%, you need to deal over 16’080 pure condi damage per sec wich is a normal dps of 20’100 to make it better than Earth. That said, this is considering a 2s cd +1s bad luck / not insta proc again for reality on Earth.

So, gonna correct myself:

You should always pick Malice and either Geomancy for max dps or Earth for ranged combat.

Greez!
- Ziggy

It depends on how long you’re gonna be ranged. Earth deals 50% damage of Geomancy and thus 16’500 dps should be achieveable in the case of Vale Guardian for example. If you are 100% ranged Earth will be better than Bursting tough.

Wahoo!

Malice is the best sigil and should always be taken.

You can then either pick Bursting for ranged dps or Geomancy for max dps.

Geomancy is stronger than bursting aslong as you proc it correctly every 12s ø. So aslong as you proc it correctly 75% of the time you should pick geomancy.

A full buffed always 9s procced Geomancy sigil deals 1600 dps. This means you’d have to deal 33’000 dps to outdamage it with Bursting, wich is quite impossible.

Greez!
- Ziggy

Wahoo!

This happens when the server thinks “oh he lags, better port that mob back”. I’ve had this some times with any fast pushing skill, like illlusionary wave, into the void or air blast. Knockdowns with knockbacks wich make the enemy fly away slowly like big ol’ bomb or the glint elite do not proc this “oh he lags” behavor.

TL;DR: It’s not the skill itself, it’s the server responsible for this bug to occur.

Greez!
- Xyonon

Wahoo!

This happens when the server thinks “oh he lags, better port that mob back”. I’ve had this some times with any fast pushing skill, like illlusionary wave, into the void or air blast. Knockdowns with knockbacks wich make the enemy fly away slowly like big ol’ bomb or the glint elite do not proc this “oh he lags” behavor.

TL;DR: It’s not the skill itself, it’s the server responsible for this bug to occur.

Greez!
- Xyonon

Obtena.7952:

The question here isn’t if the damage output calculated from one skill or a string of them is precise. The real question of interest is the correlation between the DPS you get from a build playing the game and the calculation; they can’t be exact because the calculations are simply max possible DPS outputs; realistically, you can’t get the max possible, or very few people can.

The damage of each skill in the list is isolated and correct if you look just at itself. You could stick a few skills of the list together to create a rotation, but that’s where the mess starts.

What you get by doing that is some “happy-world” unrealistic hyper damage. Yet I can think about that too and calcualte expected human flaws aswell things you might want to do such as seeker pushing etc, to achieve a much more realistic result.

I will definitly do a theory max dps rota, but just for fun. What my main work will be is the list of skills aswell true rotations for each boss.

Greez Ziggy ^^

As long as it is an auto attack – calculations are precise. You can also do the rotation ingame regardless of buffs and then scale it up to full buffed values, those would be exact aswell.

I’ve been fighting sabetha today and hit her with 9-10k bomb autos, Pretty much what I expected. Yet I have to agree that my armor type expections of the enemies might be wrong.

I tested by throwing tons of nades on each boss to find out the differences between them, wich fitted the differences of pvp golems → light medium heavy / 2000 2200 2600. But I start to think of different numbers with same % differences like those → 2200 2600 3000.

TL;DR: The values in my spreadsheet should have been for gorsy but fit more to sabby.

greez!

insanemaniac.2456:

Xyonon.3987:

and then you started to use the bomb kit …

lol god after all this youd think i would learn.

hawr? ö.ö

I’d like to see less damage on the skills in return of more defensive abilities on them. Then you also would have to buff the rifles damage output tough

I’d like to have an additional feature for this skill, that you swap place with your target, that’d be awesome and cause a lot of confusion (real confusion) in the battlefield xP

It’s not like your whole CS combo finishes the moment you finished CS – TW lasts for 10s for instance, the last ToT and WoA won’t get the duration increase either.

You also have to sustain about ~65s quickness per rotation, since it lasts that long. During that time you do:
1x TW
3x WoA
4x ToT
for quickness.

With 100% boon duration and no chrono runes this is 64s quickness. This means you can even kick SoI for WoC → more damage and alacrity.

It’s more optimal, but more expensive, agreed! The cheapest way Is simply SoI and Chrono runes, but Concentration is never a good idea, unless you run Sword / – & – / Shield in a comp without Rev.

Greez!

GLaDOS.5897:

Xyonon.3987:

Aslong as you do trait for domination and chrono and chaos, use zerk / assassin gear only and use at least 1 sword mainhand, everything is fine.

Are you sure about Chaos ? I would have suggested Illusions.

Back to the subject : check the Lazy Kai build for a painless open PvE experience https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-The-Leveling-Open-World-Compendium-1/

typo NOT for chaos xP

and then you started to use the bomb kit …

That’s interesting indeed – sadly the HT simply heals more than the Medkit + 33% on everything else …

^what Alpahte said.

Also you already could share 10 ppl quickness without concentration with the proper gear. The point is that this sigil messes your rotation up since you want to have shield 5# on cd all the time and you want to swap to focus when you need it, never ever else. It also has just a 70% uptime.

Aslong as you do trait for domination and chrono and not for chaos, use zerk / assassin gear only and use at least 1 sword mainhand, everything is fine.

So my Heal-O-Mancer goes pvp I like <3

Heya, here are my suggestions:

Winds of Chaos

• power damage increased by 50%
• attack cool down decreased from 1.32s to 1s
• bounce removed, still single target
• now always procs 5s vulnerability and a random condition: 6s bleed , 2s burn, 4s confusion
• grants random buffs to nearby allies in 240 range: 1s any possible boon but aegis
• clone attack cool down increased to 3s

Phase Retreat

• now blinks forward if there is no target selected
• still blinks away from the selected target
• if there are already 3 illusions active, this skill will not summon a clone, instead it will have 33% less cd

Phantasmal Warlock

• projectile removed
• now fires a beam with 2 hits; the first one acts like a warning shot, dealing 1 damage (unblockable), 0.5s later a beam fires dealing the current damage to the target and up to 4 additional enemies in a line
• range reduced from 1200 to 900
• attack cooldown reduced from 6.9s to 6s

Chaos Armor

• grants chaos armor to you and nearby allies, 360 range
• is now an aoe stunbreak
• cd increased from 35 to 45

Chaos Storm

• damage increased by 50%
• now always grants aegis on first and last proc (… again)
• duration of the storm increased from 5s to 10s
• now always dazes on 1st, 4th and 7th tic, but does not apply any condition then
• now applies a random condition; 2s weakness, 2s chill or 2s poison every not dazing tic
• now applies a random boon; 2s retaliation, 2s protection, 2s swiftness
• cd increased from 35 to 45

What do you think? And yea, I think the staff is underpowered aswell. That’s why I suggest those major buffs.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

It’s not awful, it’s just that you never want to use all skills of it. The whole setup is strange. Auto is pure condi, and even that part is rather bad, staff 2 is awesome for everyone, I’d just like it to not create a clone when we have 3 phants out already … 3 is only good for power builds, 4 is pretty much always garbage, slightly ok for pvp but the cd is ridiculous and CS feels like you throw rotten eggs at someone – not dangerious at all but annoying, yet still better than doing nothing (if you hate that person)…

However I use the staff in raids from time to time too, but only if I go max dps for fun. Maybe it’s even a good idea to do so in some situations, I will try at sabby for instance, once I’ve got a good dps meter that is legal.

For open world it’s a great weapon to solo normally dangerious champs like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6oc_LRPiHA

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Yup, for solos it’s a defensive weapon, for raids it’s the best phant <3 and yes 6 condis+

• Ele has only staff dps for gorsy and d/wh for rest as viable builds. There is no reason to heal or tank since they loose so much damage that you better replace them with an actual healer / tank. Those are 2 viable builds and 2 fun builds, just like condi or dps mes is a fun build.
• You never have to cleave in raid, you have to focus on one big target and all adds at sabby get cleaved away anyway, regardless how much damage the mesmer dealt to them. Hoever the fight gets shorter if the mesmer deals more damage to the boss itself. With your philosophy we should all play engi and spam bomb auto since it’s the strongest 5 target spam skill there is, and tempest air 5 is according to this garbage… Does this make sense? No, not at all.
• Your phants barely have to die during any bossfight at the raids if you do it right. It’s not like a damage focused Mesmer is gonna deal more damag than a tempest in any way, but he deals more than one if you include the passive damage others deals more because of him. That’s the whole point and if you don’t understand that simple “passive damage – concept” you shouldn’t try to set up any party at all.

Heya,

Correction correction: I take it you talk about the way to use Mes and Rev in their own subgroup right? People do that because they don’t have a 2nd Mesmer, not to have only one Mesmer. 2 Mesmers teams are stronger than 1 Mesmer teams. One will not be able to sustain enough alacrity for everyone and quickness is just a lucky pick. It’s also pure luck if everyone has fury or the ones in sub 3 have might. Optimal teams have 2 groups, even druid in them.

Yea druid engi and tempest are all good picks as I mentioned, but none of them are needed at all encounters. That’s what I meant.

Greez
- Madame Le Blanc

Heyhey,

Despite the fact that the staff is not met, it is indeed a great weapon, but hard to use properly.

For raids you want it only for chaos storm and iWarlock and you mustn’t do any auto attacks with it. To not use any aa’s while swapping to staff is achieved by using CS during that swap time and use all your skills so you can swap back before having to aa.

It’s a great way of dealing good power damage, but normally more alacrity does the same job, just passive by buffing allies more. If you have high boon duration you could go for Sword / Shield + Staff and sustain alacrity with WoC and 1 avenger. Then use 2 warlocks for max dps.

For solo and open world simply replace the aa with mantra of pain and you’ll have a powerful weapon overall.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

OS and FB is a long time ago and they were simply too noisy. Didn’t notice anything ’bout nades tough :o

Some kits are picked for one skill only. I mean when do you ever need anything else than acid bomb in raids? :P If the skills are strong enough they’re viable. Look at bulwark, great for fotm.

Afaik there has never been a change to nades o.O Dunno what you mean :o

Heya, everyone!

Condi is fine, there is almost no difference to power … At least aslong as you use supportive skills like WoR, Mimic and WoA aswell TW ofc. The only thing that changes in that scenario is that your phantasms deal significantly more damge.

Yet I wouldn’t recommend it in general. You can use it for bossfights in fotm, that’s where it shines. Or it’s good if your party lacks condi in raids. But in an optimal raid group it’s garbage. You could be the ranged guy at Sabby tough, if your pt needs more heal from druid.

Support is the normal Chrono pretty much everyone plays. Max out boon dura, use shield phants and grant 100% quickness and alacrity to everyone in your squad. Your passive damage + your own damage is over 30k per second, wich makes us wanted for every raid and fotm party.

Max DpS is also an option. Either condi or power, both builds get up to 20k dps if done right. Yet since they drop your alacrity and quickness uptime so hard, It would require another Mesmer to be in your party and therefore you’d be better of replacing you with a Tempest. Those builds are only for open world or fotm when you are 2 Mes / or for fun ofc.

Heal-O-Mancer is the best viable option we’ve got for raids next to the meta. A Mesmer is able to support, tank and heal all at the same time. Still 100% quickness and alacrity uptime. And this allows you to replace the druid with a dps profession and prevents anyone to lose dps due tanking. Altough your own dps drops to a minimum, that’s a small sacrifice for what you will gain out of this. I really love this one, did serval full runs as a Heal-O-Mancer! <3

TL;DR: Mesmer is currently the profession with the biggest build diversity, altough there are still only 2-3 REALLY optimal builds for raids, it’s still more than most other professions who are stuck to one build.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Ananeos.4587:

Torment is the second weakest damaging condition in the game. No.

Only for PvE. It’s fine in PvP / WvW, since either they move or they become an easy target.

Heya,

Well I look at a raid perspective and the only thing I see is this:

Essential professions:

• Berserker
• Herald
• Chronomancer

Good to have professions:

• Druid
• Scrapper
• Tempest

Idc if we have one professions:

• Reaper
• Thief
• Guardian

Chrono aka Mesmer are on the top of the food chain since hot and still solid standing there. The only thing that changed since the last patch is that each party now wants two of us.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

it’s not the amount of skill one that makes this skill terrible, it’s the other skills. give this kit 5 different kinds of sprays and it’ll be fine >_>

And I’m just sittin’ here, reading every post, lookin’ like this:

xD

Ayo,

With DT you’ll be overcapping by 8%, positive, but there is no problem with that. You simply have more power and an air sigil compared to the standard support build, nothing you lose for your personal damage.
You’ll be running ±2 avengers anyway to sustain 100% alacrity for your whole party. Your allies deal more more damage with that alacrity, than a dps phantasm of yours anyway, so more passive damage on your account.
This said, the phants will indeed crit less, but have more power. Overall I’d agree with a lower phant dps, but the difference sure is smaller than the massive boost to your personal damage. Besides except for VG you’ll be forced to pick a focus anyway and to swap out the shield is a no-go, but even there I start to tend to use a focus. Yet against Gorsy DT isn’t a good idea beacuse of the updrafts and alacrity lack during dat time messes up TW uptime at all breakbar phases, so don’t use it there.

Condie is questionable agreed! It’s really just the optimal solution in an suboptimal group in the first place. That’s what I meant.

Or am I incorrect somewhere?

Greez!
- Me xD

GLaDOS.5897:

Xyonon.3987:

Heya,

I have to disagree with you guys, saying there aren’t any other viable builds. Metabattle is way out of line about that (like always … xD). There are extremly many Mesmer builds you can use in raids, if you know when and how.

• Danger Time Chrono
• Standard Support Chrono
• Danger Time Tank Chrono
• Standard Tank Chrono
• Heal-O-Mancer (Tank aswell)
• Max DpS Power Chrono
• Max DpS Condi Mes
• Support Condi Mes

I can give you at least one reason for using every single one of them. I played them all and I pick everyone of them once in a while. How much I trust in each build? Well look at my inventory:

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Apart from the very obvious standard support, standard tank (which is, I assume, standard support with a bit of toughness) and Heal-o-Mancer (which you have discussed in another thread), could you elaborate on those builds ?

I’m most especially interested in how you make the Danger Time and Condition variations work, keeping in mind we are talking PvE.

The Standard Support Chrono needs full kitten armor and accuracy sigils aswell oil for when not with the druid for max dps. So you can get more out of danger time than you first might think.

The Danger Time Chrono goes full zerker and uses air sigils instead of accuracy and uses sharpening stones regardless of druid. Now simply put up 2-3 avengers (with a 2nd Chrono, wich I suppose is even meta for pugs now, it’s even enough with 1 avenger) and you’ll have perma slow together with TW and WoA. This build boosts personal damage by a big amount, so try to have 100% boon duration so you can use calamity for the extra alacrity and personal damage.

For the Condi Chronos it’s rather a niche. I used them against all bosses but gorsy seems suboptimal since the duellists always hit the adds before the updraft. I somehow couldn’t really sustain good damage on him, maybe gonna try again soon, to find out if I made mistakes or if the build really is suboptimal under the given conditions.
However I used Condi Chrono for VG and Sabby just fine. For VG I used the full dps condi just once as a full condi dps profession. I didn’t like it too much since the support is extremly low and almost requires another mes in the same sub … not that big fan of it, but the damage is decent. Yet the support variation is quite nice – you can summon 2 duellists at the split phase on red but still stay at blue to strip boons aswell go for green field duty due to scepter ranged attack. Sword isn’t too shabby as condi against VG too due low armor.
Against Sabby I only use it if you want to keep your healer close and Mes is the lowest dps loss to go ranged.

Opinions? If you find anything wrong with it, tell me, we all do mistakes

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Hey

No, not every build is viable… “Viable” is something subjective tough – for me, viable means it’s the most efficient way to play in a current situation. Aslong as build X comes into that situation at least in one scenario – it’s gonna be viable.

Don’t sugarcoat really bad builds by telling people “you can clear the raid with it”. If you see people clear the raid with 5 people, everything seems “viable” in a 10 man raid. With that – I have to disagree tough.

Greez
- Le Blanc

Heya,

I have to disagree with you guys, saying there aren’t any other viable builds. Metabattle is way out of line about that (like always … xD). There are extremly many Mesmer builds you can use in raids, if you know when and how.

• Danger Time Chrono
• Standard Support Chrono
• Danger Time Tank Chrono
• Standard Tank Chrono
• Heal-O-Mancer (Tank aswell)
• Max DpS Power Chrono
• Max DpS Condi Mes
• Support Condi Mes

I can give you at least one reason for using every single one of them. I played them all and I pick everyone of them once in a while. How much I trust in each build? Well look at my inventory:

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Heya!

If you have no mainhand in the 2nd set, you’ll use the first mainhand, so you swap to it.

It’s not a flexible / good sigil tough, it forces you to completly mess up your rotation and you’ll not always have your skills rdy if you need them. The duration is also too short for a 100% uptime, so even if you swap at the right moment, you can’t support a full CS (F5) with it.
Better get your boon dura elsewhere. I suggest 5x surging + platin doubloon and bountiful sharps or simply leadership here. Those are the best runes you could have as a Chrono.

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Hey,

Commanders gear is terrible for a mesmer in pve in every situation. There is always better gear you can use. Go for a zerk / kitten mix for solo, it’s way better to kill enemies fast than wanting to tank them for a bit.

Oh and Chrono is a great profession for solo and open world, don’t let anyone else tell you different!

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Hey,

For open world you can use anything you want, so sword shield + gs is totally fine. I still suggest a sword offhand instead of a gs for soloing stuff and for zerging champs the staff is probably the best choice.

For FotM you should be using a quickness focused build. There are multiple ones to achieve this – either with chrono runes and signet of inspiration or simply with boon duration runes and a better useful utility skill instead of SoI. You are useful because you grant quickness and alacrity. Your personal dps is medium so better boost your allies to be worth going with them Change your build according to the situation tough.

For Raids you have tons of builds to choose from, Mes has the widest build diversity of all professions there. But I think you don’t want to go there, or do you? Lemme know ^^

Greez!
- Madame Le Blanc

Still attackable imo, but you can “hide” them at will and they get repaired on resummon.
And yea I’d shafe sneaky too to 20s fueltime.

Well it still is a huge dps boost to use its toolbelt and it is arguably better than EG if you need to break the break bar and have no worries about stunbreak or conditions.

Wahooo!!!

I just had a nice tought about gyros and how to make them feel unique! The solution is a fuel system!

I try to keep it short and let you guys talk about the idea:

For instance, Medic Gyro. Right now it has 15s duration, 20s cd and heals periodicly aoe and has an initial heal on summon.

Suggestion: Medic Gyro is now a toggle and has a 20s duration. You have a yellow 20s on your gyro where normaly the cd would be. Now this number goes down to 0. Onces it reaches zero they gyro despawns and the number starts rising again, up to 20. You can start or stop the gyro at any time and so play with the duration and cd.

The initial heal transfers to the toolbelt skill ofc :P and a 3s internal cd for the on / off switch is recommended too. If a gyro dies, they cannot be resummoned until the fuel is full again (20s)

How to balance it with traits like final salvo etc is something different. It’s just about the concept for now, what do you guys think about gyros working like that?

Greez!
- Ziggy

Wahoo!

Obtena.7952:

0.84 second cast? How is this number derived? I know it’s on Wiki but how does someone realistically measure 0.84 second cast time on skill?

Attack with bombs for 5 minutes and count the mobs you used. I did this one myself for all autos and it’s correct.

insanemaniac.2456:

oh really, only 3200 power?

perfectly doable. my engi has 2686 and a few of my pieces are assassin. with 25 might and a food i already have 3536, nearly 400 more than “needed”.

Agreed, it’s even better bro. A full buffed power Engi has 3827 Power and easily 100% Crit Chance.

Greez!
- Ziggy

Still deals tons of dmg (+ boonstrip). Dredges do not approve

~ weekly bump! ~